Abortion is one of the most widely and frequently debated topics of today’s media. When an incident involving a local student made national news, the debate enveloped Seattle.

In Winter 2010, a Ballard High School student went to the school’s Teen Health Center seeking a pregnancy test and feedback from professionals. After learning she was pregnant, the Teen Health Center arranged for her to get an abortion that very day.

The girl was able to do this due to a Washington State law that gives minors full abortion rights without parental consent.

However, when the girl’s mother found out about the abortion months afterward, she was outraged. Although the mother had signed paperwork allowing her daughter to utilize the “Reproductive-Health Care” offered at Ballard’s school-housed clinic, she was unaware that the services included abortion.

“No where in this paperwork does it mention abortion or facilitating abortion”, she told KOMO 4 News in an interview in late March, identifying her daughter as a “pro-life advocate”.

Sara Rigel, the manager of Ballard’s Teen Health Center, insists that what took place was not only 100 percent legal, but that the information was available.

“The laws for consent and treatment of minors in Washington state are quite clear in terms of who can access certain types of services without parental consent,” says Rigel.

The story printed the Seattle Times, and was even featured on KOMO 4 and FOX News.

In the entire U.S., Washington is one of 13 states that allow minors to seek medical help themselves, and one of only seven that gives abortion rights to underage citizens.
Ballard itself has received large amounts of press since the issue came to light a month ago. FOX made an on-campus appearance to get the full scoop.

Through all this, the school has tried to remain sane and respect the girl’s choices. Due to the privacy policy, the identity of the girl has been kept secret, even from other BHS students.

“It was a lot of rumors … but for the most part everyone was really supportive [of the girl’s choices],” says Katie Seibel, a sophomore at Ballard. “The whole thing was just a lot of bad press.”

Will Ballard’s Teen Health Center change its ways since the outburst? Probably not. Although this “bad press” has plagued BHS in recent weeks, all services are continuing as they were before the incident arose.

The only possible change will be to more clearly mark all available treatments offered at Teen Health Centers to avoid more incidents where the parents are unaware of the services offered at school.

Garfield’s Teen Health Center operates under the same laws as the one at Ballard, but has never had any similar incidents or run-ins with the district since it opened in the mid-1990s.

Seattle School District supports the work that the Teen Health Centers do to keep the students in school, which means keeping them healthy.
“All of our [confidential] services are open to any student who needs them,” says Happy Salinas-Santos, the nurse practitioner at Garfield, “but we encourage kids to be open with their parents as well.”

A communication breakdown like this might be the link where family support for teen health centers is broken, as in the Ballard case, where a moral family upset brought negative press to the school and Teen Health Centers everywhere.

“There will always be those who don’t agree with the laws of Washington State, but the district and people who work here believe in what they do,” says Salinas-Santos, who assures that all the press will not affect the position of the clinics.

As for the Ballard case: a private, moral misunderstanding provided a haven for the media to launch an invasive series of news stories that only got people riled up, rather than changing anything.

As Salinas-Santos says of the pregnancy protection services offered in the clinics, “reproductive health care is available for any woman who wants it.”